There's a moment I remember as if it were yesterday. A Thursday afternoon in the spring of 2024. I'm standing on the construction site of my own house, three A4 binders in my hands, a smartphone in my pocket with two hundred and forty WhatsApp messages from the architect, the structural engineer, the electrician, and the insurance company. I need one piece of information from a quote I received six weeks ago. I can't find it.
That's the moment Roxnova began. Not with a business idea. But with a very concrete pain.
What software for homebuilders didn't do
That evening, I started looking. Really looking — for an app that helps someone building a house keep an overview. I found nothing. Nothing that was truly made for private individuals. There was professional software for architecture firms, starting at 80 euros a month. There were Excel templates some clerk in an office had once thrown together. There were Dropbox folder how-tos from 2015.
But nothing that answered my question: Where are all the important documents of my building project, in one place, searchable, secure — and simple enough that I can still deal with them after a twelve-hour day?
So I started building it myself.
Pin & Done turned into a realization
That first building-records app became Pin & Done. A tool that puts your records into your hands — digital, sorted, and searchable — AI-supported, but simple enough that my mother can use it. Today it's in use with hundreds of families who are building or renovating.
But Pin & Done turned into something bigger. A realization. There are thousands of small problems like this. Problems no one solves — because big software houses can't make money on them and small service providers don't have the time. Club boards that hand-stitch the newsletter together and send it out every month. Tax advisors sorting receipts by hand. Care-service managers filling in shift schedules in Word. Parishes that would write their funding applications on a typewriter, if they still had one.
AI is not the answer to everything. But it is the answer to the boring parts that drain the energy we need for the human ones.
That realization became Roxnova.
What Roxnova really is
Roxnova is not a software shop. Roxnova is not an AI consultancy. Roxnova is not a training company either — even though I build apps, do AI consulting, and run trainings.
Roxnova is a voice. A voice for the people who hold a piece of the world together — tradespeople, solo entrepreneurs, club boards, caregivers, small shops. A voice that says: AI is not the enemy. AI is not the end of your profession. AI is your apprentice. If you learn to lead it.
I founded Roxnova because I'd run out of patience with everyone who won't say exactly that. With software that's too complicated. With consulting that, after three months, still hasn't delivered an answer. With the unspoken assumption that women 35-plus are too late to take AI into their own hands. That isn't true. They are exactly right.
And now?
Today I'm building PDF Nischenfinder — a second app. Writing "The AI Conductor" — a book and a course for women in the AI working world. Running trainings for tradespeople and evening sessions for parishes. Advising small businesses on how to get cited in the AI answers of ChatGPT and Claude. And working on a voice for AI with heart in the German-speaking region.
If you feel like the world is getting faster than you can breathe — you are not alone. That's exactly why this site, this book, this course, these apps exist. So that you aren't swept along, but help shape what comes next.
More AI = More Human. Exactly that.